November 2019 Web Server Survey
27th November, 2019
In the November 2019 survey we received responses from 1,308,343,327 sites across 243,734,379 unique domain names and 9,274,744 web-facing computers. This reflects a gain of 7.46 million sites, 2.18 million domains and 230,000 computers.
Amongst the largest web server vendors, Microsoft, nginx, and Google all gained sites this month, increasing by 19.41 million (+10.59%), 10.17 million (+2.38%), and 1.33 million (+3.83%) sites respectively, whilst Apache lost 13.56 million (-3.64%) sites.
While Microsoft gained substantially the most sites overall, this translated to a relatively small increase of domains (+13,000). As a result, it saw the largest loss of domain market share, dropping by 0.18pp. Apache similarly lost market share, with a drop of 0.16pp, despite a large increase in domains (+268,000).
nginx fared better, with an increase in domains (+522,000) almost double that of Apache’s leaving its market share largely unchanged. nginx also saw large gains in web-facing computers (+113,000) and amongst the top million busiest sites (+1,000) giving it the largest market share increases in those metrics.
All of the largest web server vendors were however outpaced this month in domain gains by both Cloudflare and OpenResty, which increased by 1.06 million and 558,000 domains. While the survey tracks these products separately, OpenResty makes uses of the nginx core, integrating it with additional Lua-based modules, while Cloudflare’s own server software was originally based on nginx. The survey now finds a total of 18.22 million domains for the Cloudflare web server software, and 7.10 million for OpenResty.
| Developer | October 2019 | Percent | November 2019 | Percent | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nginx | 427,719,289 | 32.88% | 437,886,327 | 33.47% | 0.59 |
| Apache | 372,604,250 | 28.64% | 359,048,240 | 27.44% | -1.20 |
| Microsoft | 183,224,187 | 14.08% | 202,633,184 | 15.49% | 1.40 |
| 34,861,968 | 2.68% | 36,196,549 | 2.77% | 0.09 |
Most Reliable Hosting Company Sites in October 2019
6th November, 2019
| Rank | Performance Graph | OS | Outage hh:mm:ss |
Failed Req% |
DNS | Connect | First byte |
Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rackspace | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 2.081 | 0.005 | 0.012 | 0.012 |
| 2 | Hyve Managed Hosting | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.146 | 0.084 | 0.168 | 0.168 |
| 3 | ServerStack | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.207 | 0.084 | 0.168 | 0.168 |
| 4 | EveryCity | SmartOS | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 0.223 | 0.074 | 0.149 | 0.149 |
| 5 | Swishmail | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 0.210 | 0.084 | 0.167 | 0.167 |
| 6 | Pair Networks | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 0.317 | 0.094 | 0.187 | 0.187 |
| 7 | www.dinahosting.com | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 0.266 | 0.095 | 0.190 | 0.190 |
| 8 | GoDaddy.com Inc | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.010 | 0.385 | 0.005 | 0.028 | 0.029 |
| 9 | New York Internet (NYI) | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.010 | 0.509 | 0.054 | 0.107 | 0.107 |
| 10 | Bigstep | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.014 | 0.210 | 0.078 | 0.157 | 0.157 |
Rackspace had the most reliable hosting company site in October 2019, responding to all of Netcraft's requests with an average connection time of 4.79ms. This is the ninth time that Rackspace has appeared in the top 10 in 2019. Rackspace offers a range of managed dedicated and cloud hosting solutions from data centres in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australasia.
Hyve Managed Hosting and ServerStack complete the top three, also responding to all of Netcraft's requests in October. Just as in September, the two providers' sites are separated by average connection time. Hyve's site had an average connection time of 83.87ms, and ServerStack's site average connection time was 83.99ms. Hyve Managed Hosting has appeared in the top 10 consecutively for the last seven months.
In eighth place, GoDaddy had the fastest average connection time of 4.56ms. GoDaddy provides a website builder tool that allows customers to build a web presence with simple tools.
Linux continues to be the predominantly used operating system, powering seven of the top ten sites. SmartOS appears with EveryCity and FreeBSD appears twice with Swishmail and New York Internet (NYI).
Netcraft measures and makes available the response times of around twenty leading hosting providers' sites. The performance measurements are made at fifteen minute intervals from separate points around the internet, and averages are calculated over the immediately preceding 24 hour period.
From a customer's point of view, the percentage of failed requests is more pertinent than outages on hosting companies' own sites, as this gives a pointer to reliability of routing, and this is why we choose to rank our table by fewest failed requests, rather than shortest periods of outage. In the event the number of failed requests are equal then sites are ranked by average connection times.
Information on the measurement process and current measurements is available.
October 2019 Web Server Survey
24th October, 2019
In the October 2019 survey we received responses from 1,300,884,420 sites across 241,553,033 unique domain names and 9,045,029 web-facing computers. This reflects a gain of 9.71 million sites, 421,000 domains and a loss of 23,000 computers.
Amongst the largest web server vendors, only nginx and Google gained sites this month with the two vendors increasing by 5.67 million (+1.34%) and 1.80 million (+5.45%) sites respectively, whilst Apache and Microsoft lost 2.14 million (-0.57%) and 6.77 million (-3.56%) sites.
nginx was in fact the only major web server vendor to see increases in most metrics this month, with gains in domains (+480,000), web-facing computers (+12,000), and top million websites (+472).
Apache saw substantially the largest loss of domains, dropping by 762,000 (-1.04%), with Microsoft following with a smaller drop of 125,000 (-0.26%). These losses were largely offset by increases in domains using other smaller vendors, such as Cloudflare and Tengine, both of which are based on nginx.
In terms of web-facing computers, Microsoft saw the largest loss of 56,000 (-3.46%), followed by Apache which dropped 15,000 (-0.46%). A large proportion of Microsoft's loss came at hosting provider Cloud Innovation which appeared to switch many sites to Tengine.
| Developer | September 2019 | Percent | October 2019 | Percent | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nginx | 422,048,243 | 32.69% | 427,719,289 | 32.88% | 0.19 |
| Apache | 374,739,321 | 29.02% | 372,604,250 | 28.64% | -0.38 |
| Microsoft | 189,991,312 | 14.71% | 183,224,187 | 14.08% | -0.63 |
| 33,058,930 | 2.56% | 34,861,968 | 2.68% | 0.12 |
Most Reliable Hosting Company Sites in September 2019
3rd October, 2019
| Rank | Performance Graph | OS | Outage hh:mm:ss |
Failed Req% |
DNS | Connect | First byte |
Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York Internet (NYI) | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.521 | 0.053 | 0.107 | 0.107 |
| 2 | EveryCity | SmartOS | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.224 | 0.074 | 0.148 | 0.148 |
| 3 | ServerStack | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.214 | 0.084 | 0.167 | 0.167 |
| 4 | Hyve Managed Hosting | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.148 | 0.084 | 0.168 | 0.168 |
| 5 | Pair Networks | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.318 | 0.093 | 0.186 | 0.186 |
| 6 | www.dinahosting.com | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.271 | 0.095 | 0.190 | 0.190 |
| 7 | www.choopa.com | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 0.239 | 0.005 | 0.024 | 0.024 |
| 8 | Rackspace | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 2.108 | 0.005 | 0.014 | 0.014 |
| 9 | CWCS Managed Hosting | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 0.292 | 0.080 | 0.163 | 0.163 |
| 10 | Hivelocity | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 0.243 | 0.108 | 0.214 | 0.214 |
New York Internet (NYI) had the most reliable hosting company website in September 2019, responding to all of Netcraft's requests. This is the fourth time NYI has appeared in the top 10 in 2019. NYI offers bare metal, cloud and colocation services in its US data centers, and recently expanded into the Chicago market with the acquisition of a new data center.
The next five hosting company sites also responded to all of our requests, and are separated in the ranking by their average connection time. Second-placed EveryCity has had 99.998% uptime since Netcraft started monitoring 5 years ago and is the only site Netcraft is monitoring that is powered by SmartOS.
Third place was close with ServerStack claiming the position with an average connection time of 83.6ms—just half a millisecond faster than Hyve Managed Hosting in fourth place. ServerStack has now appeared in the top 10 for five consecutive months.
In sixth place, Choopa.com failed to respond to a single request but had the fastest average connection time of 5.2ms. This was closely followed by Rackspace, with an average connection time of 5.5ms.
FreeBSD and SmartOS appear in first and second place in September, with New York Internet (NYI) and EveryCity. The eight hosting company sites that complete the top 10 are powered by Linux.
Netcraft measures and makes available the response times of around twenty leading hosting providers' sites. The performance measurements are made at fifteen minute intervals from separate points around the internet, and averages are calculated over the immediately preceding 24 hour period.
From a customer's point of view, the percentage of failed requests is more pertinent than outages on hosting companies' own sites, as this gives a pointer to reliability of routing, and this is why we choose to rank our table by fewest failed requests, rather than shortest periods of outage. In the event the number of failed requests are equal then sites are ranked by average connection times.
Information on the measurement process and current measurements is available.
September 2019 Web Server Survey
27th September, 2019
In the September 2019 survey we received responses from 1,291,178,101 sites across 241,131,705 unique domain names and 9,068,313 web-facing computers. This reflects a gain of 19 million sites, 1.69 million domains and 119,000 computers.
All major vendors gained sites this month. The largest gain was for nginx with an increase of 20.6 million sites, followed by Microsoft (+2.9 million), Google (+2.1 million) and Apache (+462,000). This extends nginx's lead as the largest web server vendor by number of sites; it gained 1.12 percentage points taking it to a 32.7% market share. nginx also showed the largest gains in number of unique domains and web-facing computers.
The largest gain within the top million sites this month was by LiteSpeed, which also saw gains in hostnames, domains, and web-facing computers. The September survey saw 1,422 more sites within the top million using this light-weight Apache alternative, an 8.0% increase. This was accompanied by increases of 480,000 sites (+2.6%), 326,000 domains (+9.4%) and 1,665 web-facing computers (+8.1%).
There are losses in market share for both Apache and nginx as the largest server vendors by number of active sites. Apache lost 22,000 active sites while nginx gained 915,000; due to large gains elsewhere this amounted to Apache losing 0.94pp and nginx losing 0.11pp. Google gained 800,000 active sites and 0.16pp of market share to retake third place from Cloudflare; Cloudflare gained 591,000 sites. The largest increase of active sites was in sites running openresty with an increase of 1.04 million.
Web Server Releases
Apache 2.4.41 was released on August 14th bringing several security fixes. This is the first release of Apache 2.4 since 2.4.39 was released on April 1st.
OpenLiteSpeed released a major new feature in version 1.6.0 on September 10th adding support for QUIC and HTTP/3 as well as a new one-click build tool and support for more platforms.
Both OpenResty and Tengine released versions incorporating the nginx patches that fix the HTTP/2 related security issues discussed in last month's blog. OpenResty version 1.15.8.2 was released on September 8th and Tengine 2.3.2 released on August 20th.
| Developer | August 2019 | Percent | September 2019 | Percent | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nginx | 401,454,029 | 31.56% | 422,048,243 | 32.69% | 1.12 |
| Apache | 374,277,243 | 29.43% | 374,739,321 | 29.02% | -0.40 |
| Microsoft | 187,109,423 | 14.71% | 189,991,312 | 14.71% | 0.00 |
| 30,969,259 | 2.43% | 33,058,930 | 2.56% | 0.13 |
Most Reliable Hosting Company Sites in August 2019
3rd September, 2019
| Rank | Performance Graph | OS | Outage hh:mm:ss |
Failed Req% |
DNS | Connect | First byte |
Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GoDaddy.com Inc | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.405 | 0.004 | 0.022 | 0.023 |
| 2 | CWCS Managed Hosting | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.291 | 0.079 | 0.162 | 0.162 |
| 3 | Hyve Managed Hosting | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.157 | 0.084 | 0.168 | 0.168 |
| 4 | Pair Networks | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.324 | 0.092 | 0.185 | 0.185 |
| 5 | www.dinahosting.com | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.268 | 0.094 | 0.189 | 0.189 |
| 6 | Aruba | Windows Server 2012 | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.275 | 0.105 | 0.213 | 0.213 |
| 7 | Rackspace | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 1.154 | 0.004 | 0.011 | 0.012 |
| 8 | New York Internet (NYI) | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 0.537 | 0.054 | 0.107 | 0.107 |
| 9 | ServerStack | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 0.221 | 0.083 | 0.166 | 0.166 |
| 10 | Multacom | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.005 | 0.255 | 0.115 | 0.232 | 0.232 |
GoDaddy had the most reliable hosting company site in August 2019, with no failed requests and the fastest average connection time of 4ms. This is the second time in three months that GoDaddy has had the most reliable hosting company site. GoDaddy provides a wide range of hosting and domain registration services with 9 global data centres.
The top six hosting company sites each responded to all of Netcraft's requests and are separated by their average connection time. CWCS appears in second place in August and has been in the top 10 for three consecutive months. Italy-based hosting company Aruba appeared in sixth place. Aruba uses renewable energy, including hydro-electric and solar energy, to provide power to its green data centres, ensuring these data centres are energy efficient with zero net carbon impact.
Despite the decline of FreeBSD, it continues to appear in the top 10, as it powers the hosting company site for New York Internet (NYI). Windows Server 2012 also makes an appearance, but Linux continues to dominate, powering eight of the top 10 sites.
Netcraft measures and makes available the response times of around twenty leading hosting providers' sites. The performance measurements are made at fifteen minute intervals from separate points around the internet, and averages are calculated over the immediately preceding 24 hour period.
From a customer's point of view, the percentage of failed requests is more pertinent than outages on hosting companies' own sites, as this gives a pointer to reliability of routing, and this is why we choose to rank our table by fewest failed requests, rather than shortest periods of outage. In the event the number of failed requests are equal then sites are ranked by average connection times.
Information on the measurement process and current measurements is available.